This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

Good old Pentax have seen fit to follow Nikon and Canon‘s recent updates to roll out a successor to their popular K-xSLR.

Sure, the K-r looks a bit like a toy camera in the image above, but the $800 pricetag on the K-r will soon push any thought of Fisher-Price out of your mind. For that octuplet of benjamins, what you’ll find is a modest improvement to the K-x.

Like the K-x, the K-r has the same 12 megapixel sensor, but you’ve got an improved ISO range of up to 25,600… an utter joke, frankly, but you should be able to pull off relatively crisp and noiseless ISO 6400 images with an upwards range like that. The burst rate has also been improved to six frames per second, which is pretty nice, and the biggest improvement: a new 3″ LCD. Additionally, like all the latest SLRs, this one shoots 720p video at 24 frames per second.

It looks like a fine camera, we just don’t see why — with these modest improvements — you wouldn’t pick up Nikon’s D3100 instead, which is a better camera for a competitive price. I suppose, ultimately though, it all comes down to what lenses you’ve already got lying around in your kit.